Why NIU's new football coach Hammock is already scaring opponents
DETROIT - For Eastern Michigan coach Chris Creighton, "scary" is the word that comes to mind when thinking about new coaching hires in the MAC.
That fear he cites is enough to drive him to try and out-prepare coaches such as new NIU head man Thomas Hammock, who participated in his first MAC Media Day on Tuesday at Ford Field in Detroit.
"Coach Hammock's reputation and all that stuff is just stellar. He's an alum, knows the program, knows where it comes from," Creighton said. "From my perspective, great hire. From my perspective, scary for me."
This season, Hammock is joined by new MAC head coaches Tom Arth (Akron), Scott Loeffler (Bowling Green) and Jim McElwain (Central Michigan).
Hammock met the league's coaches at the MAC meeting in Arizona in the spring and said he feels at relative ease in discussions with his new colleagues.
"It's been good. Comfortable. Easy," Hammock said. "It's a lot easier than I anticipated."
Hammock was a graduate assistant at Wisconsin coaching under Barry Alvarez when Kent State head coach Sean Lewis played there.
Lewis said NIU knows exactly what it's getting with Hammock.
"A guy who's passionate about the game, a guy who cares about the young men that are underneath him and a guy with an infectious personality that you like to be around," Lewis said.
Ball State coach Mike Neu, entering his fourth year with the program, knows the experience of being a head coach taking the reins at the school they attended.
"You've been following your program ever since your playing days ended, and you're 100% invested, so now when you're back in the position of being a head coach, and you're an alum, it just adds to it," Neu said. "You put a little bit more pressure on yourself, obviously, and your expectation level, you take losses hard.
"Every loss is hard, but it's that much more when you're an alum, but that's our first MAC game [this year]. We go to DeKalb, obviously facing the MAC champions. So there's a chance.
Obviously Rod (Carey) and his staff did a great job and moved on to Temple, but Coach Hammock has obviously done a great job with recruiting. I know those guys will be ready to play, and it'll be a slugfest."
Buffalo head coach Lance Leipold employed new NIU offensive line coach Daryl Agpalsa for the last four seasons at Buffalo and in the previous two seasons when Leipold was head coach at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater.
"Daryl is an excellent person and family man, outstanding teacher and communicator of what his expectations are and very even-keeled and not what people sometimes think of an offensive line coach," Leipold said. "Daryl being from Hawaii, he's a pretty laid-back dude sometimes, but that doesn't mean he's not passionate [and] caring. And those are probably the best things that I would say about his consistency and his teaching ways."